Unapologetic Obama determined to continue spying on Americans

By CALLIE MORAN
June 11, 2013

Obama: “We are, therefore we spy.”

The spying administration of President Barack Obama is determined to keep snooping into the lives of any and all Americans while it considers charges against the government contractor who leaked the story to a British newspaper reporter.

Obama is not apologizing for the program that snoops 24/7 into the lives of U.S. citizens and is not backing down in his apparent determination to ignore privacy and other rights that used to be guaranteed by the Constitution.

“The President is venturing into dangerous territory but he doesn’t seem to care,” privacy expert Brian Callings told Capitol Hill Blue Monday. “He is taking the invasions of privacy of the George W. Bush administration and going where no administration has gone before.”

Obama’s actions completely ignore the promises of his campaign for President in 2008 when he openly criticized the anti-privacy of outgoing President George W. Bush and promised to roll back the abuses of the USA Patriot Act, the post-911 attack laws that stripped Americans of basic protections and took government spying of its citizens to new levels.

Instead of rolling back the Patriot act, Obama as President embraced the law and increased its ability to invade the lives of American citizens. Government snooping has increased tenfold under his Presidency.

Reports Lara Jakes of The Associated Press:

The Obama administration considered whether to charge a government contractor with leaking classified surveillance secrets while it defended the broad U.S. spy program that it says keeps America safe from terrorists.

Facing a global uproar over the programs that track phone and Internet messages around the world, the Justice Department continued to investigate whether the disclosures of Edward Snowden, 29, an employee of government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, were criminal.

Meanwhile, the European Parliament planned to debate the spy programs Tuesday and whether they have violated local privacy protections. EU officials in Brussels pledged to seek answers from U.S. diplomats at a trans-Atlantic ministerial meeting in Dublin later this week.

The global scrutiny comes after revelations from Snowden, who has chosen to reveal his identity. Snowden has fled to Hong Kong in hopes of escaping criminal charges as lawmakers including Senate intelligence chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California accuse him of committing an “act of treason” that should be prosecuted.

Officials in Germany and the European Union issued calm but firm complaints Monday over two National Security Agency programs that target suspicious foreign messages — potentially including phone numbers, email, images, video and other online communications transmitted through U.S. providers. The chief British diplomat felt it necessary to try to assure Parliament that the spy programs do not encroach on U.K. privacy laws.

And in Washington, members of Congress said they would take a new look at potential ways to keep the U.S. safe from terror attacks without giving up privacy protections that critics charge are at risk with the government’s current authority to broadly sweep up personal communications.

“There’s very little trust in the government, and that’s for good reason,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. “We’re our own worst enemy.”

A senior U.S. intelligence official on Monday said there were no plans to scrap the programs that, despite the backlash, continue to receive widespread if cautious support within Congress. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive security issue.

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“There’s very little trust in the government, and that’s for good reason,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. “We’re our own worst enemy.”

Indeed.

One definition of terrorism states that it is: “The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims”

It seems to me our own US Government fits all three aspects of that definition.

That is, their part in starting not one but TWO totally unneeded “wars of preemption” in Afghanistan and Iraq clearly fits the “violence” part.

And our politician’s continued “be very afraid” and “homeland security” dogma, easily fits the “intimidation” part.

Finally, and as I’ve stated in another thread, as all that “official” fear mongering now spewing from the mouths and pens of our politicians has far LESS to do with keeping all of us “safe”, and far MORE to do with keeping the 800,000+ now involved in some form of “secret surveillance” in the USA continually fed with the hundreds of billions of tax dollars they (and their companies) now receive annually from the public trough.

It seems to me that THAT nonsense clearly fits the “political” part of the definition.

So, my friends, in that sense, it appears that the biggest “terrorists” in all this, are Barak Obama and his thousands of minions who are now trying desperately to keep the facade of the “War on Terror” viable in the face of increasing evidence that it’s all nothing but a HUGE fraud.

Clearly, just like George W. Bush before him, Mr. Obama now needs to be impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors”, particularly for his blatant disregard of the 4th Amendment…for purely political ends.

outraged

June 11, 2013 at 10:49 am

Hello Keith – I hope PRISM reads your post and gets the message !!! I could not have said it any better than you.
Sadly though, other countries seem to be more outraged then the US citizens. How come?

Carl Nemo **==

June 11, 2013 at 10:53 am

Hi Keith…

I’ve been meaning to compliment you on your post content of late, all of them spot-on.

All I can say is “you and I are one” as when Spock is doing the Vulcan mind meld.

Thanks for your well stated material.

Carl Nemo **==

griff6r

June 11, 2013 at 10:18 am

Interesting position from some one who won the presidency on the “I’m not Bush” argument.

Keith, who’s going to impeach Obama. According to a recent PEW Poll 64% of democrats have no problem with his surveillance state. Working to repeal, or at the least, reform the PATRIOT Act seems to be a more realistic option, for starters.

Keith

June 11, 2013 at 9:22 pm

You may well be correct in that getting a majority to impeach the President in both houses of Congress would be a stretch.

Unfortunately, most Americans (including a majority of the crooks now sitting in Congress most of whom ALSO are worthy of impeachment) have long since swallowed the “Big Lie” called the “War on Terror”.

Furthermore, the crooks in Congress are not about to derail the hundreds of billions of tax dollars now flowing into their districts annually in the name of “Homeland Security”. So perpetuating the “Big Lie” is clearly in their best political interests as well.

I believe it was Adolph Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda (Joseph Goebbels) who once said that, “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”

We must start to ask ourselves, if a Congress with an approval rating of 15% claims something is legal, is that actually a true statement of fact?

We outside of the Senate Intelligence Committee do not have all the information on the program. Why can’t they share what checks and balances they claim are in place to prevent wrongful accusations?

I fail to see how disclosure of their checks could be harmful or informative to potential wrong doers. I fear there are no checks and this is the real reason they won’t share the data.

Carl Nemo **==

June 11, 2013 at 10:50 am

I find it ironic that the face of “Big Brother” speaking endless support of the modern surveillance state would end up being a black man. Maybe it makes it more palatable to our seemingly uncaring masses. Just don’t threaten their imagined right to ‘shop until they drop’ or cut off their inane HDTV programming. Then there might be some ‘trouble in Dodge’ so to speak.

Don’t take this comment as being racist, but simply a statement of observed irony. Ever-scheming white men created this surveillance state nightmare, but they’ll use a minority personage to shove their anti/unconstitutional for the ‘good of the state’ propaganda down our collective throats. If one thinks deeply on this matter, then President Obama should be the last person on earth to support this now out of control surveillance scheme. Rest assured this nation’s black community in addition to others will suffer mightily if this ever-growing surveillance scheme is turned against “We the People” in an in our face manner.

I suggest concerned citizens contact their Congressional reps and demand this freedom deadly nonsense be reined in. At least make an effort. I do so all the time, regardless of the process seming futile. Mid-term elections are coming up, so now is the time to exert some pressure on our duly elected reps.

Carl Nemo **==

griff6r

June 11, 2013 at 11:26 am

As luck would have it, the Republicans now have some thing to campaign on for the next election cycle, a fool-proof way to energize all those “freedom-loving conservatives” out there. Kinda like Obama used it to corral all those “freedom-loving liberals” out there.

Vote for *insert hand-picked candidate’s name here* and end this outraeoous government intrusion.

Eventually this will pass, as all things do in this modern era, and it will be business-as-usual in the not-so-hallowed halls of Washington.

The outrage will dissipate with the gentle insistence of the media, and those that still oppose these intrusions will be mocked as America-hating extremists that don’t care about our safety.

I wonder how many people have been extra-judiciously assassinated based on material gleaned from their Internet usage?

It really scares me they could combine this secretly gathered data and decide to murder you without giving you any chance to defend yourself. People do stupid things online thinking they are anonymous. Could someone be droned to death based on this material?

David

June 11, 2013 at 4:06 pm

Obviously all this criticism of Obama means someone has to step up and play Devil’s advocate. So let me try…

Obama is justified in defending all this unconstitutional spying because…

I’ve always felt in politics it is not what is on the table but under it that is of concern.

As a tired analogy this whole mess or is it messes or Messi – I’ve lost count is like the ice berg with 10% you see and the the 90% hidden. In this case just the “security” aspect. What actually do they do? What do we really not know about?

I thought “Enemy Of The State” was a great but highly improbable movie – or was it?

Keith

June 12, 2013 at 8:52 am

Back when I first became a USAF Officer, I took a solemn oath to “…preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies…foreign and domestic.”

On that day, many years ago, I never dreamed we’d ever have a “domestic” one tearing our Constitution to shreds….let alone someone sitting in the White House!